Fox Buys Roku for $22B & The UK Bans Social Media for Kids

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0:31Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Harry Potter and Matilda don't even think about opening up Instagram. The UK is banning social media for kids. Then Fox is buying Roku for$22 billion. It's Tuesday, June 16th. Let's ride.

0:58If you wanted to capture the essence of the United States of 2026 in an object, what would you choose? That was the question facing the America 250 Commission, which yesterday revealed the contents of a 900-pound time capsule that will be buried on July 4th and dug up 250 years later in the year 2276. The commission asked for help by requesting keepsakes from all 50 states, five territories and three branches of government, and everyone took it in a different direction. Maine submitted a bone from an endangered whale. Georgia sent in a painting of the master's logo and California offered a prediction by a chatbot of what the state would look like 250 years from now.

1:37Maryland initially tried to submit Old Bay seasoning, naturally, but that was rejected because it could degrade over time. Yeah, I'm actually less interested about what's inside than in how you keep what's inside preserved for 250 years because it's an engineering problem. The AP described how engineers plan to keep things safe. Water is the enemy. Time capsules typically fail because water gets inside and destroys everything that you so painstakingly curated. This time capsule is stainless steel. They chose a cylinder instead of a box because corners and edges are more likely to crack over long periods of time.

2:12They also sealed the contents inside at a 35 % relative humidity, which is moist enough that the paper contents won't dry out, but it's dry enough to avoid moisture damage. Plus, they also buried it 10 feet underground, which protects it from temperature and weather swings. The quote from the engineer who designed the capsule, Philadelphia would have to be six feet underwater in order for this time capsule to even possibly take on water. So, looks like everything is in good hands. I think they should just go visit my parents' basement to learn how people accumulate things over time and nothing even seems to go anywhere.

2:44It seems to stay there for decades. So maybe they should just go and take notes. And now a word from our sponsor, ServiceNow. Neil, AI was supposed to handle the parts of the job I hate. Instead, it just describes them, suggests what to do about them, and then leaves me to do it. That's not help. That's homework. ServiceNow's AI specialists are different. They're not a tool. think of them as digital teammates who can actually do the work. They can resolve cases, process requests, close loops without generating extra work for you. When you can truly delegate to AI, you can get back the work only you can do.

3:18The work that requires a person with ideas and judgment and, you know, a pulse. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. That's servicenow.com. Fox is moving deeper into your living room and making itself comfortable. The media empire spent$22 billion to buy the connected streaming giant Roku yesterday, giving it a major foothold in the streaming industry. Fox has mostly sat on the sidelines for the streaming wars, focusing instead on selling ads for live sports and news. It did dip a toe into the streaming wars back in 2020 when it acquired Tubi, but its Fox One app launched last year has yet to attract a big subscriber base.

3:57But Roku is a major player, reaching over 100 million households globally. It also occupies a unique position within the streaming landscape. When you buy a Roku, you can load it up with other streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Prime. So if you're any one of those companies, you have to play nice with Roku. Analysts describe it as a TV gatekeeper who gets a little sugar whenever you sign up for another service through its platform. But investors in both companies aren't necessarily a fan of the team up. Fox hasn't really needed streaming up until this point since its sports and news divisions are money-making machines.

4:32So why bring in Roku, which has struggled to turn a profit consistently, just to try and make a late play for streaming relevance? Neil, Fox's stock finished the day down 15 % and Roku down 2%. Marrying content and distribution like Fox is trying to do here is very difficult. It has not worked out in the past, but it's fascinating because historically the order's been the other way around. The distribution company has bought the content company. If you go just back a decade, there were all these internet and telecom companies trying to buy content companies or media companies. You had AT &T, Verizon, AOL.

5:06They all were buying Time Warner and Yahoo, and it did not work out. I mean, AOL's purchase of Time Warner in 2000 for$165 billion was considered the worst corporate deal of all time. Fox is doing the opposite. It is a content company historically that says actually maybe the future TV isn't through content. It's by owning the means of distribution. It's by owning the platform by which you can get to all the other streaming services. And remember, actually, Fox has been selling off some of its content in 2019. It sold its movie studio, its stake in Hulu, its entertainment assets to Disney for$71 billion and really started to focus on the things it did best, which was air NFL football games and air Fox News into your parents' living room because those are the money makers of this Fox empire.

5:53But if you are Fox, you're looking around and seeing, all right, cable is dying. We've heard that written on the walls for the past decade or so. And that's not good for you because those news and sports channels do still rely on cable. So how do you solve that problem? You solve it by buying yourself a new distribution network, which is 100 million households that currently subscribe to Roku. So it was trying to make a late play for the streaming worlds, but really it was just making it a late play to make sure that cable dying off doesn't kill off its main core businesses. And it's taking an unorthodox approach into the streaming wars now because it's betting on ad-supported free streaming.

6:31So it bought Tubi a few years ago, which actually has been – seems like a stroke of genius because Tubi is huge and a lot of Gen Z loves it. But ad-supported streaming has been kind of in vogue. Even Netflix, all these other streaming platforms say, well, people are not going to necessarily pay$20 a month for my service. But maybe they'll pay$5.99 or even if we give it to them for free and we'll just sell ads on it. And this is a growing market. Ad-supporting streaming plans now represent almost 50 % of all premium subscription video-on-demand signups in the U.S. Two years ago, that was just 39%.

7:05So it is climbing. And then when you look at the numbers of how much market share a Fox Roku streaming service would command, I mean, it's number three behind YouTube and Disney. It's going to take up 10.2 % of total US TV viewing time by any media company that's ahead of Netflix, it's ahead of Paramount, it's ahead of NBCUniversal, it's ahead of Amazon. I think the biggest risk here and maybe why the market was not looking so kindly on this deal is that Roku's biggest advantage has been neutrality because it works with Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Comcast. Anyone who has a Roku knows that some of those streaming services literally appear on the remote of Roku and they liked Roku because, hey, if I'm Netflix, this gives me a chance to move into more households as well.

7:49But now that Fox owns it, will those relationships get a little strained? Will Roku continue to act as this unbiased platform company? That remains to be seen. In addition to the fact that Roku has struggled making money and Fox has been very good at making money of late. Those are probably some of the reasons why the market was not so happy that these two are teaming up. Moving on, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is embracing his new role as headmaster at Hogwarts. Yesterday, he announced that the UK is banning children under 16 from using social media. The sweeping rule, which goes into effect next year, will apply to popular apps like Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, but not to messaging platforms like WhatsApp.

8:29In justifying the ban, Starmer framed the issue as an existential battle over childhood, a battle that kids were losing, at no fault of their own, to the big tech companies. Starmer said, quote, Every parent can see it with their own eyes. Social media is making children unhappy. I've heard firsthand from families crying out for change, and we will do right by them. If the policy were successful, he added, we'd see a cultural change, a sense that actually you can grow up differently. The UK joins a growing list of countries blocking kids from accessing social media, which was pioneered by Australia six months ago.

9:01Starmer said he was directly inspired by Australia's approach, using it as a model to craft his own policy. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was overjoyed to have an ally in this fight, calling the UK's ban an important step. Of course, not everyone agrees it is an important step or even a worthy one. Digital privacy organizations hate the idea of internet age checks, and tech companies are very much opposed as well. Under Australia and the UK's laws, they're on the hook for tens of millions of dollars if they don't take reasonable measures to keep kids off their platforms. Toby, the bans, they are spreading.

9:32And it looks like kids are taking it well. As soon as this ban was announced, the BBC went into some classrooms and started interviewing kids. The BBC asked one girl, what was your screen time last weekend? She said nine hours. And the BBC interviewer said, you're going to have a lot more time to fill. What are you going to do? She said, stare at a wall, which maybe is preferable to what's going on with kids and adolescents right now with the relationship with social media. But this ban definitely goes further than Australia. The government is considering preventing strangers from being allowed to contact children.

10:06They want force breaks in that infinite scrolling algorithm. And the reason why they feel emboldened to do this is that there's just tons of public support for it. More than 90 % of those polled supported an under-16 social media ban. The government received 116 ,000 public submissions, the second largest consultation response since the UK's same-sex marriage consultation in 2012. That just shows how everyone is pretty aligned that social media is bad for kids and we want to do something about it. Well, not everyone is aligned. I mean, the tech companies say that this is a bad policy because let's just see YouTube statement.

10:44They said it would push kids out of curated, supervised, beneficial experiences toward anonymous, less safe services. They say, look, we are regulated by the government. We have to do certain things around our content that we put on our platforms. if the kids are banned from going on YouTube or Instagram, which are above board, what's going to happen when they go into even darker Internet spaces and they they think that these these policies will do that. The other line is that this is not going to work like we could do all these age verification things, but kids are still going to find a way to go online.

11:16So it's just misguided policy. There should be other ways to create more safety for children online than these blanket bans. and they point to what's happening in Australia because yes, Australia banned kids from going on social media six months ago. But in a recent survey, 70 % of parents said their children were still on those banned platforms. And in a report from March, the eSafety Commissioner from Australia said that, quote, despite overall reductions in account ownership, a substantial number of children aged under 16 retain accounts. I guess the counter argument to that, that, you know, politicians are making is that, listen, they know kids are going to find a way around these social media bans, but it's similar to alcohol restrictions.

11:56Just because some teenagers are still going to go to your parents' basement and drink alcohol doesn't mean that you just give up altogether in trying to regulate it. And really, a lot of them are pointing to the next generation. If they don't grow up on social media, it will become this new normal, basically, for the kids of the world. That is why they're saying even though some people are going to slip through the cracks, even though some people are still going to access it right now, Maybe in the future, it will become a less normal thing to do for kids. Up next, the vibes for the World Cup have been even better than anticipated.

12:30Excellent games, joyous fans, the U.S. looking dangerous. But there is one element that's dragging the moon down. Hydration breaks. For the first time in the World Cup's 96-year history, FIFA has instituted mandatory stoppages around the 22nd and 67th minute of each game, effectively dividing the beautiful game in two quarters. The official explanation, FIFA said it wanted to protect the players' health by giving them hydration breaks while running around in the steamy American summer. But fans are not buying that. They're convinced it's a money grab to enable six additional minutes of commercials during each game.

13:04And that's exactly what's been happening. When the World Cup games kicked off on Thursday, Fox, which broadcast the games in the U.S., cut to commercials after announcing a, quote, Powerade hydration break. This may not seem like a huge deal to fans of American sports. commercials are intrinsic to broadcasts like football and basketball. After all, the Super Bowl is probably more about the ad breaks than the game itself. But soccer, that's different. The sport is characterized by its constantly ticking clock, interrupted only by the whistle for halftime and full time. A player could be writhing on the grass in pain, and his teammate would play on if it didn't look too serious.

13:38So the backlash has been severe, with fans, coaches, and some players outraged over the creeping commercialization of the game. Toby, before we move on mind if i just grab some water i'm a little thirsty here's the thing it is very hot in here so i will allow that but zoom out follow the money here because the financial piece of this is difficult to ignore if fox gets two minutes and 10 seconds of commercial break eve two times a match that is across 104 matches total that's 832 new 30 second advertising slots that previously had never existed at world cup so that is why people are saying read between the lines here buddies we just talked about what how fox makes money it's through selling ads on sports yeah so i don't know if it's going to go away anytime soon either because the 2030 world cup that goes to spain portugal and morocco also you know hot during the summers 2034 that goes to saudi arabia so maybe these regions with extreme summer heat the water breaks are just going to become the new normal for this tournament because you're just going to make so much money as a broadcaster when you can toss in these extra ad slots one of the amazing reasons why fans think that fifa is full of it is that in 2014 they also instituted hydration breaks but that was not mandatory it was only when there was a threshold there was a temperature threshold this was in brazil and when the temperature rose above 32 degrees celsius 89.6 degrees fahrenheit that's when those games triggered a hydration break but now it is mandatory for every single game the stadiums in the hottest places in the United States, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Los Angeles have domes.

15:17So when you're watching the first game on Thursday, when they went to hydration break, the temperature was 71 degrees Fahrenheit. So the fact that FIFA in the past instituted a voluntary, a voluntary hydration break at something like 90 degrees Fahrenheit. And now they're doing a blanket one where, where teams in domes playing at 71 degrees are getting them. That's where people say this doesn't add up. This has to be a money grab. And also just tactically, they have been proven as a chance to switch momentum during games. There are these graphs of who has the ball more, who's offering more of an attacking threat.

15:53And oftentimes water breaks provide a reprieve for the teams that are under siege right now. And it's made for some interesting tactical tussles. The one I'm thinking of is Cape Verde versus Spain yesterday. These are a juggernaut versus, you know, one of the last teams to qualify for the tournament. and the star of that unlikely 0-0 draw yesterday was Kate Verity's goalie, who's a 40-year-old named Vazenia. He gained 4.4 million Instagram followers in less than a day after providing this unlikely tie. He started the match with 45 ,000. Now he has more than Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, Aaron Judge, Josh Allen, and Jalen Brunson.

16:36So again, I don't know how much Waterbreak contributed to this, but it does a little bit get that transition well here's the transition neil if you are that at all if you are a team that's you know defending for their life as cape verde was against spain the extra break you know a little extra reprieve maybe some fresher legs we have seen a little bit of the the underdogs perform well so far in the tournament i wonder if tactically water breaks are contributing to that yeah as one ex uh user put it i love soccer because you can score zero goals like cape verde did and have it be the best day in the history of your nation and truly was What a sport.

17:08Incredible scenes. I mean, this is our archipelago off the coast of West Africa. There's 500 ,000 people, which is less than the population of Sacramento. And they just went toe to toe with Spain. Nil-nil Dravozinha is a new hero. And I do have a soft spot for Cape Verde because I was driving around southeastern New England, which is where there's a big diaspora of these people in the United States. I got lunch at a Cape Verde place. So good. So good in New Bedford. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Toby's trends right after this.

17:41Toby, let's do some free word association. Financially stressed. Toby. What about unexpected$1 ,000 medical expense? Crying, stress, lots of stress. Duck. Aflac. Smart man. Aflac pays claims fast, accurately, and fairly. Their plans can even help businesses and employees save tax dollars when payroll deductions are pre-taxed while coming at no direct cost to businesses. To learn more, just head to aflac.com slash morningbrewdaily. That's A-F-L-A-C dot com slash morningbrewdaily. Toby, do you have any strong assets? Yes, I have great legs. Toby, I mean the investment kind, the ones that make up a multi-asset portfolio, like what you can build on public with stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and more.

18:30With public, you can now create agents that can monitor the market, manage your cash, and execute your trades. Just enter a prompt, approve the workflow, and put your agent to work. Head to public.com slash morningbrew. That's public.com slash morningbrew. Paid for by public investing, full disclosure, and podcast description. Neil, it feels like every week there's a new AI model making headlines. And somehow I'm expected to keep up with all of them. Fair, but Minimax's new M3 is one worth paying attention to. Their open-weight model combines frontier-level coding and AI agent capabilities, a massive 1 million token contacts window, and native multimodal understanding.

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19:52They're showing up in smoothies, workout snacks, desserts, coffee, and your social media feed. Last year, U.S. sales of dates jumped 33 % as consumers look to replace ultra-processed foods with more natural ingredients. Dates are a star in that regard. They are naturally sweet, which makes them great substitutes for sugar and other sweeteners. on TikTok and in my apartment. People are stuffing them with peanut butter and dipping them in chocolate for a guilt-free sweet treat. They're also packed with fiber, which has been catching up to protein as the nutritional trend at DeJore. Retailers are actively hunting for new, fun, date-based products to put on shelves.

20:28You can now find candy-dusted dates, nut butter stuffed dates, birthday cake-flavored date balls everywhere you look at your local grocery store. The date craze has gotten so intense that growers in California say They can't plant new trees fast enough to keep up with demand. Neil, I've heard the dating scene is rough, but maybe everyone is just focusing on the wrong dates. Why not both? Call it a double date. Let's talk about fiber, which some are calling the next protein. Now, dates have a lot of fiber, about three pieces of them contain about five grams, and you're supposed to get 25 grams per day for women and 38 grams for men.

21:05So you're contributing to your daily fiber intake there. However, the average American is consuming only 10 to 15 grams daily. So when dieticians look at the craze over protein and the potential craze over fiber, they say, why is everyone eating so much protein? Because we already have enough protein, but we definitely don't get enough fiber. So I think that is at least one of the factors pushing dates to this new level of stardom. And you have to remember, too, dates are definitely tied to Middle Eastern and North African food culture as well. The Middle East and Africa still account for 85.3 % of the global date market share.

21:41And they typically see a spike in consumption along with breaking fast for Ramadan and other holidays like that. So it has this very deep cultural role in some parts of the world. But now you're right. It's being adopted by health spaces because it's got a lot of fiber. They're naturally sweet. Dietitians are saying this is not new to us at all. We've been recommending you put dates in your smoothies for, you know, years now because it makes them sweet without, you know, bumping up other sugar content. So I think you're absolutely right that it is the new ride, ride, whatever wave that makes it good.

22:17Like maybe before it was that the fact that it was naturally sweet. Now it's the fact that it's got a lot of fiber in it, whatever it takes, just rebrand yourself, even though you're an old food into it. you know, this new, you can teach an old dog new tricks. And that tricks is just say that you have a lot of fiber in it. And there are plenty of startups that are getting into this space. And I think it helps that date lends itself to like a punny name. So there's so many companies, just date, date, better date fix. And they're all doing weird things with dates. We haven't talked about this, but they're very versatile.

22:47You can do a lot of different things with them. You can stuff them with nut butter, dip them in chocolate. Some are getting even weirder with There's a company called Julie's that does sour watermelon dusted dates. DateFix does dates blended with orange blossom water in squeezable pouches before workouts. And we haven't talked about this element as well, which is the social media aspect. It's dates are blown up on social media. And oftentimes of people just like trying them for the first time or doing weird things with them. And oftentimes that is where these companies in the CPG space that want to go on grocery shelves take their cues.

23:23They're saying, oh my God, people are doing these really interesting things on social media with dates that are catching on. Why don't we do them, put it in a package and sell it for$15? I think that they are here to stay. I do remember every time that we have dates in my household, my fiance basically asked Leska, hey, Alexa, what are the health benefits of dates? And you get things like improved digestion, reduced risk of heart disease, reduced risk of cancer, reduced risk of type two diabetes. So it's just one of those things that feels good for you and tastes delicious at the same time. That's an enduring health trend, if you ask me.

23:57First time I realized dates, or I just kind of dates came on my consciousness, was driving through the Coachella Valley from like LA to Palm Springs. And that is the hub of date production in the United States. And you just see date things everywhere. Dates, smoothies, so many roadside stands selling dates. And I was like, huh, maybe I should start eating dates. But right now, of course, with the date craze, they're saying we don't have enough land. Like I'm scrambling. There's going to be a huge supply shortage. So we just talked a few weeks ago about the the weight protein shortage. Wouldn't be surprised if the price of dates went up because of insane demand and just not enough production.

24:32OK, let's bring to the finish with some final headlines. Stocks ripped higher yesterday after the U.S. signed a deal with Iran to extend a ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The Nasdaq gained over three percent to notch a new record thanks to rising tech shares. and the Dow joined it at an all-time high. Meanwhile, oil tumbled almost 6 % to its lowest level since March when the war was just beginning. However, details remain scarce about what terms are actually in the deal, and both sides have released contradicting statements about what they agreed to. Not to mention, both the U.S. and Iran acknowledge they punted their toughest conversations around things like Iran's nuclear program to a future date.